5e < PF1 < 3.5e < PF2Shrimple as that.
those aren't the only systems that exist
As someone who only played PF1, why does everyone shit on PF2?
>>96506591>why does everyone shit on PF2?You're on /tg/, being contrarian is like the most coolest thinguest ever. You can read a bunch of opinions from experienced 5e DMs breaking down how the game works extremely smoothly even at higher levels, and then you come to /tg/ and some faggot is screeching about the game being "extremely imbalanced".You should try it. It's peak 3.5 style gaming.
>>96506591PF2 has one of the biggest problems from PF1 with build optimization being considered the "correct" way to play in all published adventures and supplements.It further compounds this by making TURN optimization the "correct" way to play in the same adventures and supplements.The result is a system that, on paper, offers you a large amount of customization in character options and turn options, but, in practice, is a stifling piece of shit that could theoretically play itself because every round and character will be following an "If, then" flow chart.If you ignore all the published adventures and shit? It's fine. The same could be said about PF1 and SF1 too. Since most will learn from prepublished shit and that will teach people the "correct" way to play, it is not shocking people who are only familiar with official stuff walk away feeling like it's kinda shit. Every single enemy and event properly scaled will assume you are a build and turn autist though, so it will require the DM to kinda cull that bullshit on a fundamental level which is a pretty massive ding against the system.
>>96506624>that could theoretically play itself because every round and character will be following an "If, then" flow chart.What a nothing burger of a statement, what the fuck does this even mean? Any tactical game is able to be reduced to an "if, then" flowchart if there is no question about what the opponent is going to do.
>>96506657>Any tactical gameYeah, and PF is a ROLE PLAYING GAME and not a tactical game.If it marketed itself as a tactics game? Then that would be a different story. As it stands now, being tactics forward is the same kind of shit that made people pass on 4e. Don't misunderstand, anything being built off 3e's bones is gonna be pretty heavily focused on tactical combat, however, there was enough additional stuff in the packaging that you could run RPG focused games well if you desired. PF2? It's not as bad as 4e was in basically jettisoning the RPG stuff, but it's not far behind it either.Combat is an ELEMENT of an RPG and PF2 is just a cunt hair away from making it the FOCUS of the game and that's where it fucks up.
>>965067083.5, pf1 and pf2 are games with heavy focus on tactical combat. That doesn't mean it's the only thing they can do, but they're dungeon crawlers first and foremost, where you kill monsters and loot weapons and money to kill more powerful monsters. Not only that, but you are specifically talking about combat, so I don't even know what you're saying right now. TURNS are non-existent outside of combat, and your argument applies to the TACTICAL COMBAT section of the game with TACTICAL COMBAT, so you basically went:>The TACTICAL COMBAT in this game is an "if then" chart, and that is le bad>Uhm, actually anon, every TACTICAL COMBAT game could be an "if then" chart if the opponents moves are already known to you>B-but it's still bad because it's a TACTICAL COMBAT game, ok?Completely incoherent.Thank you for proving my point, holy shit. Go play Fate.
>>96506582No one.. said they were? Do you understand the concept of a subset of things?
>>96506708>Yeah, and PF is a ROLE PLAYING GAME and not a tactical game.Also just because you say things doesn't mean they're true. Lots of people seem to forget that D&D 3rd was a combat game first and foremost. The slogan when it was released was literally "Back to the Dungeon" or some shit. It's a miniature war game at its core where you play a single character. "ROLE PLAYING GAME" doesn't mean shit; you can play the role of a character in a tactical combat situation as well.>B-but I can't play a wizard who instantly goes into melee because of his personality, THE GAME ISN'T ACCOMMODATING ME!!! Everything I want to play has to be easy to play otherwise it's like the game isn't ALLOWING ME TO DO IT!!!!Actually fuck off.Literally every version of D&D bar 5 was combat focused.
>>96506735>Turns are non-existent outside of combatYou CLEARLY never played an organized game. Turns exist in combat, exploration, setting up camp, and other shit.
>>96506754>Every version bar 5 was combat focusedWrong, shithead.Fighting shit was a bad idea in general until 2e started putting XP values onto monsters.
I can already tell that in 12 hours this thread will have 200+ posts of meaningless autistic back and forth. I genuinely question the value of such an exchange and ask the participants: Do you not have anything better to do?
>>96506591It has great combat but absolutely sucks at anything outside of it
>>96506754Except mid-high level 3.x was more like a puzzle of finding what of your available bullshit can fuck over a particular opponent harder. It played decently well as preparation focused puzzle. As 'tactical' game it sucked.In dnd-like family, only 4e and pf2 are designed to be encounter focused in their gameplay. And in practice, it indeed devolves to standardised dynamics and decisions when playing them.
>>96506809Everyone participating in this is proving every disappointed thing their father's ever said about this correct.
>>96506828Oh really? Lemme go ahead and crack open some PF1 adventure paths written by the devs and see what the developers intended. Oh, right...Combat.
>>96506852Rocket tag and 'tactical combat' are not the same thing
>>96506792>Wrong, shithead.Nope, it's not wrong. Read the books. Read the dugeon creation guidelines from Gary Gygax himself. The origins of D&D are dungeon crawling, and the bulk of the rules have always been focused on combat. D&D has always been about solving problems with the resources you have available, and combat.>Fighting shit was a bad ideaThese things aren't mutually exclusive. Fighting shit you can't easily beat is a bad idea, that doesn't mean you won't do it often. Why do you think every edition had monster manuals? Tip: you didn't talk to most of these monsters.>>96506828>Except mid-high level 3.x was more like a puzzle of finding what of your available bullshit can fuck over a particular opponent harder.Yes, and this highly depends on the encounters themselves. If you know exactly what to do, 3.5 will be no less "if, then" than PF2, because rules are what matter if you're going down that road. The whole point is that "if, then" as an argument for why any kind of tactical combat is bad, is retarded. Unless you're arguing that D&D 3.5 didn't have tactical combat, which... ok.>>96506809Why are you on /tg/? Why did you choose to respond to a thread you dislike? I raise you an exercising roach granny, what now?
thing you hate a lot < thing you hate a little less < ok thing < pretty good thingShrimple as that
>>96506875Except I don't hate any of them?
>>96506624>>96506708Was 2hu your DM or what? It's not supposed to be that hard.
>>96506624>PF2 has one of the biggest problems from PF1 with build optimization being considered the "correct" way to play in all published adventures and supplements.>published adventures, the exact kind of adventures that are meant to be bought and played by casuals, are reliant on build optimizationI somehow doubt this is true.
>>96506864The difference between 3.x and 4e/PF2, is that in the former 'what to do' depends much more on a particular encounter. Where in the later it's more about universal interactions and strategies, leading to very similar experience regardless of what you play or what you fight.And it was indirectly caused by the line of thought that "every combat should be tactically challenging" - this put much stronger emphasis on balance, which in turned required standardisation of interactions to keep everything predictable, which in turn destroyed variety in experience.
>>96506864No, man. You didn't get ANY benefit from combat in earlier games most of the time. Monsters didn't carry gold or gear worth note and it was a shit idea to confront them because you were going to lose something and gain nothing.Dungeon crawling had a much bigger emphasis on hazards, traps, and survival as opposed to actually fighting stuff.Hell, the earliest rules for combat were "Just use the rules for Chain Mail".
>>96506591Pathfinder exists to pander to a niche to start with, so changing up the formulae is always gonna cause friction within the community
>>96506900You're just conflating knowledge with mechanics. You can run PF2 exactly as you run 3.5, there are very few new rules in PF2, and there's nothing stopping you from using monsters in creative ways or obfuscating the challenge so that players have to think outside the box. Nothing in PF2 clashes with this, the rules are nearly the same, except with simpler modifiers. I don't know about 4e though, I read it like 10 years ago and I played 1 game of it, and didn't touch it again. 4e just read like a pure wargame, and it just wasn't evocative to me.Unless you're specifically talking about published adventures.>>96506924>You didn't get ANY benefit from combatI don't care, the GM would still make you fight monsters for the loot, how is this hard to understand, lol?>Dungeon crawling had a much bigger emphasis on hazards, traps, and survival as opposed to actually fighting stuff.Yes, and fighting was still a big part of the equation, and a big factor in survival and resource management.>Hell, the earliest rules for combat wereThe original D&D was an addon for chainmail. Do you know what chainmail is? It's a war game with miniatures. A game doesn't have to have complex rules to have tactics.
>>96506936>Rules are nearly the same, except with simpler modifiersYou say this as if character abilities are the sameYou say this as if spells haven't changed drastically in effectYou say this as if relative number progression hasn't changedYou say this as if monster type interactions haven't changedUnder the hood, PF2 is only marginally less of a wargame focused than 4e was.Granted, you can dick around with it in any way imaginable as a DM with varrying success - as with every other system in existence. This doesn't change what the underlaying mechanics were designed for.
>>96506987To me it just looks like 3.5 is already perfect, and the urge to "always progress beyond" ends up in a dumb unprofitable clusterfuck.
>>96506987>You say this as if character abilities are the same>Let me grapple with my sorcererYou know as well as I do that saying everyone could make effective use of all the rules in 3.5 (and PF1) is a weasel rat dishonest statement. I also like that not everyone has attacks of opportunity by default. And what about the stuff you can do now thanks to the new rules?>You say this as if spells haven't changed drastically in effectCompared to PF1? It has essentially the same spells. I don't see it.You also made me go and download the PDF for 4e to check this, but go read the spells from 4e. If you think 4e spells are in any way comparable to PF2 you're on the kush and it's hitting hard.>You say this as if relative number progression hasn't changedThis doesn't matter at all.>You say this as if monster type interactions haven't changedOk, in what sense? What do you mean by this?I'm starting to think you don't actually know the game you're trying to criticize.
>>96506566I've wanked at porn of this goonblin.please stop using porn characters, its not subtle at all.
Why don't people like X?>Because YRETARD! Y DOESN'T EXIST/ALWAYS EXISTED!Every time. PF got the 3e crowd and now PF2 is getting the 4e crowd. Like pottery.
>>96507122PF2 is not like 4e and will never be, no matter how much you seethe about it:)
>>96507125Close enough to attract the same level of retards, anon.
>>96507144Great opinion. Shame you don't know PF2 at all, and you probably don't know 4e either. They are nothing alike, but you wouldn't know, of course.
>>96506735>TURNS are non-existent outside of combat
>>96507150They both went hard into being combat first systems.More importantly though, I am saying PF2tards are like 4rries more than I am comparing systems here, ya dingus.
>>96507125No, it's worse in every way.
>>96507190PF2 is no more combat focused than 3.5 or pf1. Of course you wouldn't know that because you don't actually know the game you're trying to criticize.
>>96506591Pf2 is the best d20 system. But it's not pf1 or 3.x so idiots online scream about it.
>>96506899It's not. Adventures are brain dead easy unless you're the kind of sperg that facechecks every encounter.Pf2 can be way more lethal if your GM feels like being mean, because damage can pile up quick especially at low levels.
>>96507230>Pf2 is the best d20 systemlol
>>96507251
>>96506566I only ever played 5e and 3.5e and I dearly love 3.5e for the beautiful mess that it is.It's like an infinite playground of content and subsystems. It's so fun to fuck around with and to actually play.Fucking bummed we won't have a session this week.Anyhow, I only know of PF1e by playing the Owlcat videogames and looking at forum discussions and such, and it seems to me to not be much of an upgrade over 3.5e if at all. A "sidegrade" at most.PF2e seems cool on paper, but it also looks like it has a lot in the way of illusion of choice.From a player's perspective, it seems like the game gives you the idea that you have all these wild ways to build a character, but then you choose a class and you are very constrained on what that class can actually do. You can never try to go "off type" if that makes sense. Or at least that's what it looks like to me. I guess that's why that Free Archetype rule is so beloved.From a DM's perspective it does seem like a great system to run, although the lack of symmetry between characters and creatures/npcs does bother me.As far as d20 systems that are not D&D 3.5e go, Shadow of the Demon Lord and Weird Wizard look a lot more interesting in comparison if I'm allowed to add to that list, what's with being quite different with a flatter progression and such.
>>96506591It's a bloated monstrosity that's also completely soulless.
>>96507350PF2e does take a lot of what used to be part and parcel of basic class identity and make them character options, forcing you to choose between them. Free Archetype is beloved because it gives more wiggle room to experiment without sacrificing class identity.
>>96507350>It's like an infinite playground of content and subsystems.Well, yeah, but at that point you're bringing third party stuff into the mix which almost equates to homebrewing. Lets not pretend many of those classes weren't broken in some way.I get the content argument (it's one of the reasons I also really like 3.5 above similar games), but I don't think it's fair to judge the core game based on that. If we do compare core games, I'd wager PF2 has a lot more viable options than 3.5 gave you, in terms of both being balanced and enjoyable in the sense of allowing you to play the archetype you're trying to play. If by "illusion of choice" you mean "there are lots of suboptimal choices", there are a lot of those in D&D as well. You play something suboptimal sometimes because it's interesting. If you leave the min-max mindset behind you stop having this problem.Besides, helping the DM run the game is a very important part of game quality, which is an something I think a lot of people forget (even DMs sometimes). A game that is easier to DM correctly but isn't as mechanically complex will likely be more enjoyable in the long run than a game where every other spellcaster gets a spell that can blow a hole in your shit. I get that as a player it's cool to "be able to do whatever you want" (the 5e mindset), but lets be real.
>>96506754>bar 5Combat is the only thing 5e has rules for.
>>96507433How is it in any way bloated, lmao? Have you ever played 3.5 or 1e at all?
PF2e has a very real issue that the single most important stat a character has is level and despite all the options, characters are more defined by what important thing they don't have than by what they do have There's also another issue that often the least interesting options are by far the best, such as magic weapon being the best possible spell to cast at low levels
>>9650656613e > Torchbarer > Icon > 4e > 3.5 > ACKS > DCC> PF1 > 5e > PF2
>>96507566>but at that point you're bringing third party stuff into the mixNot really. Just the official stuff is so much god damn stuff.Then there's "second party stuff" like some dragon magazine content, dragonlance, etc.I never actually touched third party stuff thinking about it now.
>>96506774Now RAW they don't.
>>96507633Someone once claimed to me that D&D 5e was a bloated edition. People just say anything these days.
Kobolds or goblins?
>>96507943As enemies? Kobolds. As party members? Goblins.I’m shamelessly including somewhat conventionally attractive goblins as a player race in my game.
>>96507943Kobolds.
>>96506582Post your list of all systems that exist from worst to best
>>96506566>goblinpedoOpinion discarded.
